That is a remarkable achievement. I rarely use Apple Pay but I’m always impressed by how easy it is to use. I bet that lack of “friction” is a big part of why Apple Pay is so popular.
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GE goes with Apple
This is not an embarrassment to Microsoft – these kinds of flips happen often – but there can’t be many smiles on the faces of the Enterprise people in Redmond regardless.
Drone footage of a mailman delivering mail after California wildfires
So many questions. Why are they bothering to physically deliver the mail? Why are so many of the mailboxes fireproof?
SoundShare: The social music app, adds Party Mode, more
SoundShare was already a great social music app, but it just got better with the release of 3.0 and new features like Party Mode.
FYFD
Their NSFW name aside, this is a fascinating site with great, easy to understand descriptions of the phenomenon represented.
Apple retail chief Angela Ahrendts: We will not upsell customers to the iPhone X
Apple is usually pretty good about not “encouraging” customers to buy more than they need.
Photo tour of Apple’s new flagship Chicago store
I’d love to visit this store. Chicago is a great city and these photos really show off the new space.
Apple sued by Japanese company that owns Animoji trademark
Apple plays hardball but $20 says this gets settled out of court for “an undisclosed sum”.
As a photographer, these are 13 free apps I wouldn’t leave the house without
This is a great list of apps – I use almost all of them on a regular basis.
Apple and AT&T activate LTE Band 8 to give iPhone users in Puerto Rico cellular service by Loon Balloon
This is great news and hopefully will ease some of the pain of the people in those affected areas.
Tim Cook: Mac mini will be ‘important part’ of future lineup
Tim Cook:
“While it’s not time to share any details, we do plan for Mac mini to be an important part of our product line going forward.”
Well, good.
The most ingenious gadgets of 2017
I’m sure we’ll have arguments about this list but I hope we can agree that if the fidget spinner is the “most ingenious gadgets of 2017”, we’re doomed.
Ridiculous tricks you can do with a Slinky!
I loved my Slinky as a kid but even given an unlimited amount of time, I could never pull off the stunts this guy does with his.
Eric Clapton: “Wonderful Tonight”
People often ask me why I love Eric’s guitar playing so much—this song sums it up. Clapton doesn’t need to play 100 notes a second to make you appreciate his playing. The opening riff is so heartfelt and meaningful, it makes you listen.
Adobe remakes Lightroom CC as a hybrid app and 1TB cloud service
As usual for anything Adobe related, this will cause a lot of consternation among its users and customers. Personally, I will hold off “updating” for as long as possible.
Gravitational waves just led us to the incredible origin of gold in the universe
This is such a cool, amazing discovery. We’ve always known everything was created from stars but the knowledge your gold jewelry was probably created in the aftermath of a kilonova is mindboggling.
“Hey Siri”: Apple’s Machine Learning Journal
From Apple’s Machine Learning Journal:
The “Hey Siri” feature allows users to invoke Siri hands-free. A very small speech recognizer runs all the time and listens for just those two words. When it detects “Hey Siri”, the rest of Siri parses the following speech as a command or query. The “Hey Siri” detector uses a Deep Neural Network (DNN) to convert the acoustic pattern of your voice at each instant into a probability distribution over speech sounds. It then uses a temporal integration process to compute a confidence score that the phrase you uttered was “Hey Siri”. If the score is high enough, Siri wakes up. This article takes a look at the underlying technology.
We take speech commands like “Hey Siri” for granted these days, but what goes on in the background is absolutely amazing.
The fascinating family feud that led to Adidas and Puma, and allowed Nike to dominate the market
The fascinating story of an incredibly dysfunctional family. I knew Adidas was a German company but I had no idea Puma grew out of this feud.
Tragically Hip’s Gord Downie dead at 53
CBC: Gord Downie, the Tragically Hip frontman who united a diverse array of music lovers with his commanding stage presence and Canadiana-laced lyrics, has died. He was 53. Downie had an aggressive and incurable form of brain cancer called glioblastoma, … Continued
Dropbox Professional
Dropbox Professional lets you store, share, and track progress on your work. Get powerful features like Smart Sync and Showcase as well as 1 TB (1,000 GB) of space.
The company unveiled the new plan earlier today.
Wi-Fi security flaw not as bad as it’s KRACKed up to be
Make no mistake – this is very bad. But it’s not as catastrophic as some make it out to be.
Aquaman’s costume evolution
This is a fun, well-done video detailing all the changes in costumes over the years for a character most of us know very little about.
The war to sell you a mattress is an internet nightmare
What an insane story. We’ve all heard about these “online mattress” companies – they advertise on many podcasts – but you probably haven’t given them much thought beyond that. But its as cutthroat an industry as any other.
How to make iPhone texts and iMessages appear across all your Apple devices
I’ve always done this and found it very convenient to receive and respond to texts from whatever device/computer I have at hand.
Unsplash wallpapers
After yesterday’s post about the Irvue app, Luke Chesser, one of the co-founders of Unsplash, tweeted to me about their very own app so I’m including it here.
KRACK WPA2 Wi-Fi exploit already fixed in iOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS betas
Apple has already patched the KRACK attack WPA2 Wi-Fi vulnerability in the developer and public betas for iOS, watchOS, tvOS, and macOS.
Great news.
“While Apple is taking away buttons, we found a way to add one”
So when we ran out of buttons to hide our software’s UI behind, it really forced us to use our imagination. Instead of squeezing UI in where it didn’t fit, we built a new button to conceal it: it’s called the Camera Button.
I didn’t even think this was possible.
The router makers that have patched KRACK WPA2 Wi-Fi flaws
Some security-minded companies have already worked on fixes and are offering patches.
This is a list of companies that are offering a fix to the Wi-Fi issue we reported on this morning.
Tony Fadell sues Andy Rubin for theft of trade secrets
Privately owned Keyssa Inc, backed by iPod co-creator Tony Fadell is suing Essential Products Inc, a smartphone startup founded by Andy Rubin, the co-creator of the Android mobile phone operating system, accusing it of theft of trade secrets in a lawsuit filed on Monday in U.S. federal court in San Francisco.
Andy Rubin basically stole iOS to create Android, so is it out of the realm to think he stole this technology from Fadell? Absolutely not. Especially since Rubin was in talks with Fadell’s company for 10 months.
One person’s history of Twitter, from beginning to end
Mike Monteiro: Twitter, which was conceived and built by a room of privileged white boys (some of them my friends!), never considered the possibility that they were building a bomb. To this day, Jack Dorsey doesn’t realize the size of … Continued